CLAY AND SERGEANT.

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porated into the Union and represented in Congress? Are the freemen of the old states to become the slaves of the representatives of foreign slaves? You may have the power to pass such laws, but beware how you use it."

Mr. Barbour, of Virginia, had called the restriction "a spark ignited, which shall shake this Union to its centre."

"The gentleman talks of sparks ignited," says Mr. Otis in reply. "I can tell him that when the pine forests of Maine are lighted, they will burn with quite as fierce a flame as the spire grass of Missouri.”

In this debate, Pennsylvania was first called the "keystone state," by Mr. Clay, in his great speech, of which this passage, preserved in the reply, is one of the few frag

"I appeal to Pennsylvania, the unambitious Pennsylvania, -the key-stone of the federal arch, whether she will concur in a measure calculated to disturb the peace of this Union!"

Sir," says John Sergeant in reply, with a direct allusion to Mr. Clay, "this was a single arch, it is becoming a combination of arches; and where the centre now is, whether in Kentucky or Pennsylvania, might be very hard to tell. Pennsylvania feels her responsibility to the Union, but she feels also her responsibility to a great moral principle. That principle she announced the day she expressed her gratitude for independence. 'We feel called

upon,' she said then, 'to show the sincerity of our profession. In commemoration of our own deliverance from the tyranny of Britain, Be it enacted, that no child born hereafter shall be a slave.'

a

Northern statesmen had reason for confident language. In the House the first vote taken resulted in a division, ninety-three to seventy-two in favor of the restriction, clean majority of nineteen. And the first time what has since been called the Compromise appeared, it was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-nine to eighteen, the most eager men on both sides voting against it.*

In the Senate this proposal of the "Compromise" of the line of 36° 30', as the future boundary between free and slave states, was introduced by Mr. Thomas, of Illinois. It had been suggested in the debate of the year before. It is now very curious to see how eagerly everybody afterwards disowned it. Indeed, on the North it was a great wrong. On the whole cause of the country it was a great wrong. It is not singular, then, that it was always without an acknowledged parent.

At this session it had been suggested again by Mr. Pinkney. For political effect, however, the mover was a northern man, and Mr. Thomas, of Illinois, assumed that position. It passed the Senate first. The northern votes for it were two from Illinois, one from Rhode Island, and one from New Hampshire.

* The wits of Congress, tired of the discussion by this time, called it the "misery debate."

THE HOUSE AND SENATE AT ISSUE.

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The House refused to concur with the Senate. It insisted on its own complete "Restriction" on all the territory. The "Compromise line" was then moved again. It obtained thirty-three votes only, and the complete restriction passed by a clear majority of eight votes. This was on the 28th of February.

The succeeding votes indicated the same temper by about the same majority, and, on the 1st of March, as the House bill was sent to the Senate, it had passed by a majority of nine, making every inch of land not included among the states forever free.

The House took this vote upon its own bill, not that which had come from the Senate.

In that temper was the House when it adjourned on Wednesday. What happened on Wednesday night, what promises were made, what offices suggested, what terms instilled into recusants, will never be told. It is in the history which never was written, and it will be easier to find material for telling twenty years hence than now. But Mr. Monroe, the President, was doubtless eager that the Compromise measure should go through. Mr. Jefferson, in a letter written at the time, had said, "This is the most portentous question that ever threatened our Union. In the darkest moments of the revolutionary war, I never had any apprehensions equal to that I feel from this source."

Mr. Calhoun's account of the change in the House was, that if no arrangement had been made, Missouri and Mis

souri territory would have set up in a republic of their own; northern members, he says, knew this, and, having shown their first wish, were anxious now to avert that danger in any way that was honorable.

This theory hardly accounts for the rapidity of their change of conviction.

The history which is written tells that the Senate having returned the House bill non-concurring, the House was greatly excited. The Missouri Compromise was again suggested by a committee of conference. The debate was kept up late. After seven, Thursday evening, when Mr. Mercer, of Virginia, was pressing it, he fainted suddenly in front of the chair. The vote was pressed at once. There were one or two absentees who lost their vote by the rapidity of the decision, and the House struck out the restriction from its own bill, and acceded to the Compromise proposal by a vote of ninety to eighty-six. The majority of nine had been tortured into a minority of four. The Compromise provision, as it has been called since, took the place of the complete restriction.

At that moment there were two men, and only two in that House, who supposed that that Compromise was unconstitutional: John Randolph, who tells us so, and Mr. Archer, of Virginia. And it so trembled, it so shook in the wind, so fearful were its friends that it should fail, that they did not dare meet the re-consideration which Randolph announced that he should move in the morning.

He tells the story in one of his incoherent speeches, aiming with great bitterness at Mr. Clay, whom he calls "Mr. Manager" in speaking of this matter, and to whom he ascribes the success of the whole affair.

The night of the passage of the bill he asked Mr. Clay if he could move a re-consideration the next day. Mr. Clay said he could. In the morning Randolph suspected an intrigue to hurry the bill out of the House before he should have his chance to make his motion. He exerted himself to prevent this, as he could, out of the House, and then took his seat. "I found the clerk reading the journal; the moment after he had finished I made the motion to reconsider. I was seconded by my colleague, Mr. Archer, to whom I could appeal -not that my testimony wants evidence I should like to see the man who would question it as a matter of fact. This fact is well remembered; a lady would as soon forget her wedding-day as I forget this. The motion to re-consider was opposed; it was a debatable question; and the speaker stated something this way,' that it was not for him to give any orders; the clerk knew his duty.' The clerk went more than once-my impression is that he went more than twice. I could take I could take my oath and so, I believe, could Mr. Archer-that he made two efforts, and came back under my eye, like a mouse under the eye of a cat, with the engrossed bill in his hand. But his bread was at stake. At last, with that face, and countenance, and manner which only conscious guilt can inspire, he went off, his poverty,